Chapter 11 announced

[yknot]

45 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

Which is why I try to avoid these kinds of discussions in my life.  I don't see that we can ever reach a conclusion on these debates - even amongst Scouters.

Myself, I think the message is:

• it's without question that abuse happened
• Scouters in the BSA should always do whatever we can to prevent the abuse of youth.
• When abuse occurs, we should focus on learning what happened and work to learn from those cases so we can prevent it in the future.

To me, the relevant question is whether the BSA is safe today. 

• Regardless of whether it was safe in the 1980s and before - is it safe now? 
• Have we learned the hard cultural lessons that led us to not address this aggressively as we could have? 

What we did back then does not have to reflect on who we are today - unless we let it.  This is why I don't think we should engage in defending that time period.  When we defend it, we suggest that we agree that they made the right decisions - that given the same information we'd make the same choice today.  I don't think that's the message we want to send.

 

Well said.

[David CO]

1 hour ago, ParkMan said:

To me, the relevant question is whether the BSA is safe today. 

I don't think that will be the relevant question in the lawsuits.  I think they will be looking at how safe/unsafe BSA was at the time of the abuse.  

 

[David CO]

4 hours ago, fred8033 said:

I don't know any scouter than abused kids

Neither do I.  I don't know any scouters who abused kids.  I don't know any scouts who were abused either.  

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by David CO
clarify a thought

[TAHAWK]

Opinion: We don't know exactly how bad it was because allegations are not established facts  because not all victims may have come forward, in part to to their being deceased, ,but keeping known incidents secret was dishonest - not trustworthy -  and deprived parents of information they could have used to safeguard their children.  That secrecy was about money, not less so that Nissan hiding accident statistics and Volkswagen scamming pollution testing equipment.   

[KublaiKen]

It is probably more accurate to say one doesn't know OF any Scouters who abused kids or OF any Scouts who were abused.

[mrjohns2]

12 minutes ago, KublaiKen said:

It is probably more accurate to say one doesn't know OF any Scouters who abused kids or OF any Scouts who were abused.

Very accurate. I was friends with someone for a long time before I heard a peep about their abuse. And even then, it was just a peep. No details. 

[fred8033]

12 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

... keeping known incidents secret was dishonest - not trustworthy -  and deprived parents of information they could have used to safeguard their children.  That secrecy was about money, ...

"Some" was about money / reputation ... but I just don't accept that as a broad statement.   It's definitely not an automatic dishonest / not trustworthy.   Ask anyone in HR, the legal profession or taking responsibility.

[ThenNow]

On 2/26/2021 at 5:28 PM, yknot said:

I recently found out about a couple friends who were younger than me who were abused by an adult we knew and the guilt that I did not see it and help them is overwhelming. I wish such things had not happened to you or to them.

Many times as I've considered a response or making a point, I realize it may not help the process for you men, given your ongoing roles. As always, I offer this to add personal history and context, however anecdotal you consider it to be. Maybe my stories allow you to put a 'face' on the anonymous survivors. 

Years after I left Scouting, having achieved my goals and weathered the storm, my youngest brother told me about a close friend who was going through the same drug and alcohol mess I did. He was also a high achiever and suddenly fell off the cliff at pretty much the same point in high school. By then, my brother knew about my abuse and asked his friend about it. He quietly acknowledged, but would not come forward or speak further about it. He drank himself to death. 

I am now aware, through friends on the inside of this case, of multiple men who have filed claims against our mutual abuser. All of them are younger than I. My assumption has always been I was the first in our Troop. Our SM likely molested and abused other boys prior. Well, he almost certainly did. I hinted at it with a girl I dated years later and she all but confirmed. She was his first cousin and they shared a last name.  

All this is a segue back to an earlier topic. Namely, I emphatically forbad my two younger brothers from joining Scouts and gave no reason. I did not help anyone but them. Self-forgiveness has never come for that failure to act. I did not protect myself by reporting it nor the boys who came after me. My brothers are grateful, which is some consolation. To be candid, I too often look at their lives and wonder what mine would have been if someone had stopped him, including me. 

Put that in your psycho-babble pipe and try to smoke it. Tell me when you decipher the signals that emanate therefrom. 

Edited March 1, 2021 by ThenNow

[ThenNow]

31 minutes ago, fred8033 said:

"Some" was about money / reputation ... but I just don't accept that as a broad statement.   It's definitely not an automatic dishonest / not trustworthy.   Ask anyone in HR, the legal profession or taking responsibility.

I've read this multiple times and cannot figure out what you meant. I get sentence one, but struggle with two and three. Leg up, please?

As to two, what is it if not? And, three I simply can't decode. I even tried lemon juice and a flashlight. 

[Eagledad]

3 hours ago, ParkMan said:

Which is why I try to avoid these kinds of discussions in my life.  I don't see that we can ever reach a conclusion on these debates - even amongst Scouters.

 

I think our education system has failed our society into believing that debates (your word, not mine) has to end with a specific conclusion. Debates or discussions of observations, ideas, and so forth in early history were intended for education, hoping for, but not always expecting, a conclusion. They can just provoke higher level thought. I can certainly say that unconcluded discussions have led to many changes of idealisms including parenting, job, and religion. No winners, losers or conclusions, just growth of ideals.

I instructed my kids to formulate their opinions in discussions with the intension to not to have to repeat it. Leave the opinion without their pride as something to build the discussion, not make or break it. Pride often drives folks keep repeating themselves to sway the discussion to their conclusion because they want their thoughts to be the final winning thoughts. That is rarely ever going to happen.

Some of your thoughts are quite good. Be satisfied with that.

3 hours ago, ParkMan said:

 

To me, the relevant question is whether the BSA is safe today. 

• Regardless of whether it was safe in the 1980s and before - is it safe now? 

 

Of course we can work to make things better, but I remember that before Covoid, it seemed like the news was reporting every month a new incidence of  a teacher caught abusing a student. I have yet to hear a national organized effort to stop teachers abusing students. I know from my teacher kids that local policies are constantly changing to protect both the students and teachers, but it still occurs. So, Is it safe now? How safe is considered safe? Just a thought for discussion.

Barry

[ThenNow]

28 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

They can just provoke higher level thought. I can certainly say that unconcluded discussions have led to many changes of idealisms including parenting, job, and religion. No winners, losers or conclusions, just growth of ideals.

I instructed my kids to formulate their opinions in discussions with the intension to not to have to repeat it. Leave the opinion without their pride as something to build the discussion, not make or break it. Pride often drives folks keep repeating themselves to sway the discussion to their conclusion because they want their thoughts to be the final winning thoughts. That is rarely ever going to happen.

Good grief. This is absolute solid gold. I wish you had been my father, SM, coach, and so on and so forth. Pick one or several. Seriously and more so, I wish I had heard this when raising my boys. Then again, I would settle for having been in my right mind at that time. I was in and out of residential and IOP treatment, including three stints in the psyche hospital, for twelve years starting when they were 9 and 10.

Edited March 1, 2021 by ThenNow

[TAHAWK]

3 hours ago, KublaiKen said:

It is probably more accurate to say one doesn't know OF any Scouters who abused kids or OF any Scouts who were abused.

It is absoutely  accurate to say that I do not know how bad is was - or is, for that matter.  That statement is based on the assumption that some abuse took place, since there have been confessions and convictions.   I could have said that I know of  several Scouters who abused Scouts, if not sexually, but that was not my point.

[David CO]

30 minutes ago, TAHAWK said:

I could have said that I know of  several Scouters who abused Scouts, if not sexually, but that was not my point.

 Sure.  Some people might feel that my entire football program was abusive.  Others might say it was abusive to make my gym students take group showers.  But that's not my point either.  I'm talking about actual abuse.

Edited March 1, 2021 by David CO

[qwazse]

@ThenNow, thanks for the perspective.

3 hours ago, ThenNow said:

... Namely, I emphatically forbad my two younger brothers from joining Scouts and gave no reason. I did not help anyone but them. Self-forgiveness has never come for that failure to act. I did not protect myself by reporting it nor the boys who came after me. My brothers are grateful, which is some consolation. To be candid, I too often look at their lives and wonder what mine would have been if someone had stopped him, including me. ...

It sounds like step 1 was recognizing that you didn't do enough to stop an nefarious person. Step 2 is to recognize that nefarious people know how to avoid being stopped. They game the system, and that's intimidating to a young person who barely understands how the system works. That means that, yes, you didn't do enough, but that does not mean you weren't good enough. To get the kind of victory you're thinking of, you needed a lot of other people around you to be open and brutally honest. But, the culture was not standing by the young people who would do that.

BSA was part of that culture. I think the biggest problem was that they were arrogant enough to think they had a solution.

[David CO]

4 minutes ago, qwazse said:

you needed a lot of other people around you to be open and brutally honest.

Well, if that is true, then he has certainly come to the right forum.